Prosperity and War in the Modern Age

* Book: Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age. By Joshua S Goldstein.

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Description

1. From the author:

"World history is more than the history of one generation. World politics today grows out of many centuries of evolution and is rooted directly in the development of the Eurocentric world system over the past five centuries. This book examines the dynamics of that integrated world system of politics and economics, centered in Europe, as it developed between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The world system, as a useful and appropriate concept with relevance to contemporary world politics, is the first of four themes that intersect in the book. The second theme is the close connection between economics and politics at the international level. A third theme is the concept of social cycles, for which the book seeks to develop an appropriate definition and framework drawing on both quantitative and qualitative approaches. And the fourth theme is the interplay of revolutionary, liberal, and conservative world views that shape the ways in which different research schools see the first three themes (the world system, political economy, and social cycles)."

(chapter 1, page 1)

2. From the Wikipedia:

"In 1988, Joshua S Goldstein advanced the concept of the political midlife crisis in his book on "long cycle theory", Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age, which offers four examples of the process:

• The British Empire and the Crimean War (1853–1856): A century after Britain's successful launch of the Industrial Revolution, and following the subsequent British railway boom of 1815–1853, Britain, in the Crimean War, attacked the Russian Empire, which was perceived as a threat to British India and to eastern Mediterranean trade routes to India. The Crimean War highlighted the poor state of the British Army, which were then addressed, and Britain concentrated on colonial expansion and took no further part in European wars until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

• The German Empire and World War I (1914–1918): Under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Germany had been unified between 1864 and 1871, and then had seen 40 years' rapid industrial, military, and colonial expansion. In 1914 the Schlieffen Plan for conquering France in eight weeks was to have been followed by the subjugation of the Russian Empire, leaving Germany the master of Mitteleuropa (Central Europe). In the event, France, Britain, Russia, and the United States fought Germany to a standstill, to defeat, and to a humiliating peace settlement at Versailles (1919) and the establishment of Germany's unstable Weimar Republic (1919–33), in a prelude to World War II.

• The Soviet Union and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): The Soviet Union had industrialised rapidly under Joseph Stalin and, following World War II, had become a rival nuclear superpower to the United States. In 1962 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, intent on securing strategic parity with the United States, covertly, with the support of Fidel Castro, shipped nuclear missiles to Castro's Cuba, 70 miles from the US state of Florida. US President John F. Kennedy blockaded (the term "quarantined" being used because a blockade is an act of war), the island of Cuba and negotiated the Soviet missiles' removal from Cuba (in exchange for the subsequent removal of US missiles from Turkey).[vague]

• The United States and the Vietnam War (1955–1975): During World War II and the ensuing postwar period, the United States had greatly expanded its military capacities and industries. After France, supported financially by the US, had been defeated in Vietnam in 1954 and that country had been temporarily split into North and South Vietnam under the 1954 Geneva Accords; and when war had broken out between the North and South following South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem's refusal to permit all-Vietnam elections in 1956 as stipulated in the Geneva Accords, the ideologically anti-communist United States supported South Vietnam with materiel in a Cold War proxy war and by degrees allowed itself to be drawn into South Vietnam's losing struggle against communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong acting in South Vietnam. Ultimately, following the defeat of South Vietnam and the United States, the US's governing belief that South Vietnam's defeat would result in all of remaining Mainland Southeast Asia "going communist" (as proclaimed by the US's "domino theory"), proved erroneous."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory)

Excerpts

The world system as a meaningful unit of analysis]

Joshua Goldstein:

* "A world level of analysis is distinct from an international one.

The international level consists of the interactions of separable units sovereign nation-states while the world level consists of a single, holistic system whose parts are mutually constitutive rather than separable.2 The most important features of the world system for this book are its political and economic structure and dynamics. The world system is characterized economically by the unequal geographical division of labor between the core (secondary producers of manufactured goods) and the periphery (primary producers of raw materials). Politically the system is characterized by the systematic use of violence both to maintain and to change the power relationships in the system. Those power relationships include both the dominance of the core over the periphery and the struggle for dominance of one political unit over others within the core (hegemony). The pattern of regional division of labor between primary and secondary producers—along with the violently enforced dominance of the core over the periphery—traces back to early societies and empires. In the ancient city-state on a river, peasants upstream produced food, which was shipped downstream to the city at low cost using the river as an energy source. The city in turn shipped (lighter-weight) weapons and luxury goods upstream to the local warriors who suppressed the peasants. In later, larger, Mediterranean empires, a similar pattern occurred, with oar-driven slave boats bringing food and raw materials to the metropolis from the peripheral regions along the coast. With the advent of the sailing ship in fifteenth-century Portugal, a few individuals could move a large cargo efficiently almost anywhere in the world, using the wind as their energy source and the ocean as their medium. This, with the addition of shipborne cannons,allowed the Europeans to dominate trade globally and laid the basis for a truly world system of politics and economics."

(Long Cycles, page 2)

Great Power Wars

Joshua Goldstein:

"On the political level, the core experiences structural shifts over time, from greater hegemony (a hierarchical structure in which one nation is firmly on top) toward greater competition (a flatter hierarchy in which nations are vying for position). Ultimately, the position of nations in such a system has been decided by resort to war. In studying wars among the core countries, I rely on Levy's (1983a) quantitative data set on wars in the "great power system" since 1495 as well as his definitions of countries that belonged to that system (a membership that changes over time). "Great power wars" (wars between two or more great powers) have occurred sixty-four times between 1495 and 1975 according to Levy's count. These sixty-four wars are particularly important in this study. Although no country has yet exerted complete control in the sense of an embracing empire, a few countries have at times gained ascendancy within the core. At other times the structure of the core has not centered so strongly on one country, being more multipolar and competitive. A hegemonic power is a core state that commands an unrivaled position of economic and military superiority among the core states and is thus able largely to shape the operation of the international system. The position of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, of Great Britain in the nineteenth century, and of the United States in the mid-twentieth century are commonly cited as such cases. Other countries have made concerted' drives for world dominance but have failed (for example, Napoleon's France and Hitler's Germany). The economic and political processes of the core are closely intertwined. There isa strong historical connection between economic long waves and bouts of severe14 great power wars. And the struggle for hegemony is as much an economic asa political phenomenon. The strongest economic units can support the most powerful political and military capabilities and hence gain position in the world order. Conversely, political and military position are used to further a country's economic enrichment."

(Long Cycles, page 5)